1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an image capturing device capable of taking a still picture and also generating a digested moving picture in the course of taking of a moving picture, an image generating device for generating the digested moving picture, a moving picture generating method of generating the digested moving picture, and a computer-readable recording medium having a program applied to generate the digested moving picture.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, digital cameras of a type adaptable to take a still picture as well in the course of taking (recording) of a moving picture have been developed. For the digital cameras at the initial stage of development, taking the still picture, if effected in the course of taking of the moving picture, has caused recording to be interrupted for the period of time equivalent to recording for several frames before and after the point of time the still picture has been taken, resulting in generating no more than a discontinuous moving picture. However, the recently developed digital cameras have ensured that no interruption of recording is caused even if the still picture is taken in the course of taking of the moving picture, thus making it possible to generate a thoroughly continuous moving picture.
The digital camera of this type is suitably used to take a scene of a decisive moment that may come at any moment, specifically, provide recording of a scene of school sports and the like. This digital camera allows a user to take the still picture at one's desired timing after determining a composition while viewing a monitor-through image in the course of recording.
By the way, long-time moving picture data resulting from recording is frequently lacking in interest because of the presence of a large number of useless parts, causing the user to feel an urge to eliminate the useless parts by editing such the resultant long moving picture data. However, moving picture data editing is a troublesome work to the user, and it therefore follows that the moving picture resulting from recording with much effort is deleted in some cases without being subjected to a single view.
In this connection, there is proposed a reproducing device (see Unexamined Japanese Patent Application KOKAI Publication No. 2005-117083, for instance) capable of reproducing recorded moving picture data partially just as a digested version of the recorded moving picture data is obtained, without the need for the user to do any editing work. With the reproducing device of this type, long-time moving picture data resulting from recording and still picture data having been taken in the course of recording of the above long-time moving picture data are recorded in relation with each other. Then, the reproducing device of this type, when used in an attempt to reproduce the recorded still picture data in sequence (or to effect a slide show), is supposed to provide sequential reproducing of predetermined period's moving picture data having been recorded in relation with each still picture data, instead of reproducing of the above each still picture data. Use of the reproducing device of this type makes it possible to partially reproduce digested moving picture data of the period of time before and after the point of time the still picture has been taken, without the need to reproduce the long-time moving picture data directly.
More specifically, with the reproducing device of this type, if the still picture is taken in the course of taking of the moving picture, a flag indicating the timing that the still picture has been taken is inserted into the moving picture data to be generated. Then, in case of the slide show, after making a search for the flag having been inserted into the moving picture data, short-time moving picture data based on the point of time the flag has been inserted is reproduced. If it is assumed that the suitable number of flags have been inserted into the moving picture data, the short-time moving picture data corresponding to each flag may be reproduced in time series. According to the reproducing device of this type, it is sure that reproducing of the digested moving picture of the long-time moving picture data resulting from recording may be provided without the need to reproduce all the above long-time moving picture data.
However, the reproducing device as disclosed in the above Unexamined Japanese Patent Application KOKAI Publication No. 2005-117083 requires dedicated application software applied to, after making a search to find out that the flags having been inserted into the moving picture data are correlated, reproduce the short-time moving picture data based on the point of time each flag has been inserted. For this reason, the user makes use of only the reproducing device with the above dedicated application software installed in order to reproduce the digested moving picture, resulting in a lack of user's convenience.